External HD workflow

[eL ProduceR]

Hello everyone, I am a longtime visitor of this amazing community and this is my first post. I would like to know if anyone has done any clips transfer thru external fw, I would like an affordable solution to dump my footage when on-the-go. I'm one paycheck away from my first pro-camcorder and I would like to know my options when shooting outdoors.

 

[Blood Angel]

Windows Laptop with PCMCIA Port and external Hard Drive.

Barry made a great List of Laptops with PCMCIA here.

OR, with the 64 Gig P2 Cards upcoming, just get 2 or 3 of these, then offload at home.

OR, go with Firestore. A little divice with integrated hard drive that needs to be connected to the cam. Not my taste, but many use them.
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=133168

 

[eL ProduceR]

Thanks for your response, but what if I didn't have a laptop? I read somewhere that I could offload the P2 to an external FW HDD, my question is, are the files getting converted (to a quicktime or FCP edit-ready files) or after the HDD transfer I have to do the p2/import thingy in FCP


pd.: excuse my english

 

[Blood Angel]

Thanks for your response, but what if I didn't have a laptop? I read somewhere that I could offload the P2 to an external FW HDD, my question is, are the files getting converted (to a quicktime or FCP edit-ready files) or after the HDD transfer I have to do the p2/import thingy in FCP


pd.: excuse my english

Your english is pretty fine, I'm not a native myself. I'm from Germany and we tend to use the worst english ever heard. (It is so funny to listen to Germans trying to pronounce the "th" )

I think the offloading thingy from P2 to HD via your camera works, although I never did it myself. The files always stay in the MXF wrapper, so you have to rewrap them when importing (via "Log & Import") into MOVs.
The best workflow in that matter is using the raylight plugin for Final Cut, it is really worth the money! No re-wrapping has to be done and it speeds up importing much veeery much!

Greetings from Germany...

 

[eL ProduceR]

Thanks for your advice Blood Angel, I'm beginning to understand this workflow. So the Footage in the P2 stays in the MXF wrapper, when I import using Raylight, do I need another HDD to store that imported file? or do I work off the original HDD. What does Raylight do exactly?

 

[Pierre Petit]

The camera creates a new partition on the hard drive for each p2 card you transfer.The folder structure of the data will be the same as what you have on the p2 card. I cant remember but i think the max number of partitions for one hard disk is 15. You can find the details with a forum search it has been discussed already. It works very well if you don't mind the cables and not being able to use the cam while transfering the data. If you wanna play it safe you can use the data check option. It takes twice the time but then you are sure your data is well copied.